By GREG DIXON
I don't like going to my doctor. Sure, he's a nice enough chap, with a warm wit, warmer hands and a ready remedy for my latest ill.
But I hate going to see him all the same.
There's always a chance he's going to tell me something that I don't want to hear, like that I have some disease with a 24-letter name and no cure, or I should give up the fags.
Who needs it?
Which is exactly what I found myself wondering after last week's first episode of Body Wise.
The show sells itself as a "consumer" programme, which apparently means informing us on various health issues related to the flabby, fleshy things that hang from our heads.
Host Dr Nigel Thompson, a nice enough Irish chap who I'm quite sure has warm hands and a cupboard full of cures, told us his job was to help us to "get the very best" from our bodies.
But any expectation that his show was going to investigate real health issues like, say, what's up with the cervical smear-testing programme, quickly proved ill-founded.
Here's how the first episode started: "Tonight Lisa takes her first steps towards her goal of bigger, brighter, perkier breasts ... " announced a big, bright, perky voiceover.
"Have you seen them without a bra?" Lisa asked.
"There's a lot more to it than size ... " continued the voiceover.
For a moment I thought I was watching Jerry Springer. But no.
Body Wise appears to be yet another of the endless permutations of reality television.
Instead of dealing with issues or ideas, it's dealing with people's reactions to given situations: people who want perkier breasts, people who want to lose weight, people who want to give up the fags or coffee.
So just how educational is it? Not very. Lisa's segment (which will continue this week) was an unfortunate first-up choice of subject.
There is nothing wrong with the 35-year-old mother of three. She's just not happy that ageing and motherhood mean her breasts don't look like they used to.
"It's almost like you get punished for being a mother," she said.
While I'm not about to chastise her for her decision - the breasts and the money are hers - is this a health issue? I think not. It's called cosmetic surgery for a reason.
Worse yet, her story led to this voiceover: "After the break, just how bad are Lisa's breasts?"
I mean, really.
The other main story was also a setup for the coming weeks. Four women with weight problems have each chosen a diet - a commercial diet, not one provided by Thompson - and the show will trace their progress.
Where were the fat men in need of help, I wondered.
The only real information from this story, so far, was the cost and content of the diet programmes. Nice advertising for them, though.
The show also featured a "consumer test" - something it will do each week with the help of the Consumers' Institute - on the caffeine content of various beverages.
Oddly enough, it discovered that coffee and energy drinks have a lot of it, and drinking too many of them is probably a bad idea.
Tonight we will be told that puffing tobacco is bad for you (another big surprise) and some smokers will try various cessation programmes.
Enough.
The doctor might be in, but I will be making sure that I'm out.
* Body Wise, TV2, 8pm
Body probe goes skin deep
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